Mashable’s Pete Cashmore wrote an interesting column for CNN entitled, “Privacy is dead, and social media hold smoking gun.” He writes…
Those who insert themselves into as many channels as possible look set to capture the most value. They’ll be the richest, the most successful, the most connected, capable and influential among us. We’re all publishers now, and the more we publish, the more valuable connections we’ll make.
Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Fitbit and the SenseCam give us a simple choice: participate or fade into a lonely obscurity.
In a lot of ways I agree and am excited by where the world’s going. In some ways, what he’s saying scares me because it all can be taken too far.
What are your thoughts?
Oatmeal Stout - Justin Thorp's blog 
it’s my opinion that there is a legitimate concern for privacy as either a company can abuse it’s usage of it, i.e. selling it to third-parties without consent, or some one uses it as leverage against you.
However, for the vast majority of people who utilizes social media for everyday communication, the dirty little secret is nobody really cares what you do. Absent of unlawful behavior, I feel you have to burn some major calories on getting attention of others. If true, it suggests an accumulativea steady stream of loyal fans or building a community is actually quite difficult–you have to give reason to people to why they would want to come your site.
I mean this internet is an example of broadcasting content on it’s head. People actively have to seek out your content and pull it for usage. Whereas, old media is the opposite where people consume it by simply seating there, passively.
Where i am going with this is that the privacy issue is only as important as how big you are on the Net as your reputation is tied to your content. So control of it is important. But folks like me, it means very little what Google knows about me. What are they going to do with my reading habits? Send me more links for Sci-Fi novels? Not exactly a big deal in my book. Thoughts?